"I say, Nell, where on earth have you been? I'm starving——Hallo!" he broke off, staring first at Nell's red and downcast face, and then at Drake's smiling and quite obviously joyous one. "What——"
Drake took Nell's hand.
"We quite forgot you, Dick, and everybody and everything else. But you'll forgive us when you hear that Nell and I have—have——"
"Made it up again!" finished Dick, with a grin that ran from ear to ear. "By George, you don't say so! Well, I said it was only a tiff; now, didn't I, Nell? But it was a pretty long one. Eighteen months or thereabouts, isn't it?"
For a moment the two lovers looked sad, then Drake smiled.
"Just eighteen months too long, Dick," he said. "But you might wish us joy."
"I do, I do—or I would, if I wasn't starving!" retorted Dick. "While you have been spooning under the spreading chestnut tree, I've been wrestling with the electric dynamos; and the sight of even bread and cheese would melt me to tears. But I am glad, old man," he said, in a grave tone—"glad for both your sakes; for any one could see with three-quarters of an eye, to be exact, that you were both miserable without each other. Oh, save me from the madness of love!"
"There was a very pretty girl by the name of Angel at the Maltbys' dance," put in Drake musingly; "a very pretty girl, indeed, who sat out most of the dances, if I remember rightly, with a young friend of mine."
Dick's face grew a healthy, brick-dust red, and he glanced shyly from one to the other.
"Well hit, Drake, old man!" he said. "Yes; there was one, and I've seen her in London once or twice——"